by Zahra Girard
My voice wavers as I think to that day. I can still see the look on the faces of the men who found me, I can still feel the way they ripped hold of me by the hair, the way my son screamed as they took him, too.
I look up at Jarrett. His face is still as stone.
“They took me and Jake to their clubhouse in Salem. And they put a gun to my son’s head and told me that unless I found you again and told them where your club was getting their guns for the Triads, they would kill Jake. I did it. For him. And now, all I hear from them is silence,” I take a step towards Jarrett. More than anything right now, I want the touch of someone to comfort me. I need something to make me feel like I am not alone. To make me feel something other than this rancorous fear that is gutting me. But the look on his face stops me short. “Jarrett, I don’t have any options. I am so afraid. So afraid. And if I can’t get my son back, I’d rather just die.”
“I’m not going to let you die. And I’m not going to let Jake die. Even if that means killing every last one of these motherfuckers,” he says. “We can sort out the rest later.”
“The rest?”
“You, me, and Jake.”
I need his help more than anything; if he’s here, his club can’t be too far behind. I hope. And even if they aren’t — for some reason — my odds are so much better with Jarrett on my side.
Which is why what I’m about to say is so hard. Even if it is the right thing to do.
“There is no ‘rest’, Jarrett.”
Chapter Thirty
Jarrett
Has she lost her fucking mind?
It takes a while before my brain processes the sheer fuckery of what she just said. But I’m not walking away from her.
My knuckles pop as I clench tight to the pommel of my gun. Then I look down at it, almost surprised. I don’t remember pulling it.
I put it away.
“What do you mean? Don’t you fucking want my help?”
She crosses her arms. “I do. But I am not going to lie to you anymore. You want the truth, so here it is: this side of you scares the shit out of me. I love you — I wasn’t lying about that either — but I’m not going to have my kid around you if I’m going to have to worry about you losing your mind.”
“What do you want, then?” I say. “Because I want you two in my life and I’ll do whatever the hell I have to do to make it happen.”
I make every effort to sound calm. And it isn’t hard — her voice is only filled with concern.
“Jarrett, I know you went through things that I can’t even imagine. I understand that. But if we’re going to get serious after this, and if you’re serious about being a part of mine and my son’s lives, I want you to get help.”
“Help?”
“Counseling. Therapy. Whatever you call it.”
“A shrink?”
“If you want to be around me and my son, yeah.”
I grit my teeth. At first. But looking in her eyes, I don’t see any judgment. I never do with her. She’s always understood. She knows how hard this can be. It makes admitting it easier. She makes admitting it easier. It doesn’t feel like I’m weak. It doesn’t feel like I should be ashamed. With her, it just feels like admitting I have a problem and acknowledging that I want to get better.
“I love you, Selena. And your son, too. If that’s what it takes, I’ll get help.”
The second I say those words, I feel something un-knot in my shoulders and a weight lifts from me. I feel like I’ve taken a step — just a small step — in a very long journey.
But it feels good.
“There’s something else you need to know,” she says.
“Yeah?” I pull out a cigarette, light it, and take a calming drag. “What’s that?”
She cocks her head to the side and unfolds her arms. “I’m not saying this only because I’m worried about my son. I’m saying it because I care about you. When I see the side of you that comes out when you’ve pushed your demons into the background, it makes me realize exactly how good of a man you can be. The man that comes out is a man that I love in a way that scares me with how intense and raw it is. You light me up. You make me want to lean into every kiss. I want to build a life with you, Jarrett.”
Fuck me, am I blushing?
Maybe I am. But I do know that my back’s straighter than it was even in boot camp. And Selena’s smile is brighter than I’ve ever seen it. Even here, now, facing the fatalistic reality ahead of us, the beauty of this honest moment with her isn’t lost on me.
This is the first time in our relationship — in the years of pain, of blood, of fucking, of drinking, of suffering — that we’ve told each other the truth.
No games. No lies. No ulterior motives.
“There’s no one else who makes me feel like I can do this, Selena. If it weren’t for you, I’d be going into this fucking mess ahead looking to die,” I say. “You make me want to live.”
She loves me. Part of me. And her love — and everything that comes with it — makes me want to be a better man. With her by my side, I know I can do it. I have something to fight for.
“There’s no time like imminent death for brutal honesty, right?” she says. Then, she winks at me.
“Yeah, I’ve done the ‘I think we’re going to die, oh, and by the way, I love you’ routine more times than I can count.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Didn’t always work out so well back in the Army. Sometimes they lived, and then you got to fulfill those promises. I broke a lot of hearts back in the Rangers.”
“Then let’s try and live through this one, ok?”
I pat the seat behind me.
“We’ll live. And Jake, too. But the Jackals and the Devil’s Riders? Not a chance in hell.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Selena
I cling tight to him. He’s solid beneath my fingers. Every single inch of him firm muscle. A lethal weapon, the product of years of training and a hard life.
But beneath it all, there’s a heart that I know is capable of an incredible amount of love. Fierce love. The kind of love that can overwhelm in intensity.
And I want every bit of it now. I need it.
He is my strength. He is my last hope.
I guide him, turn by turn, through the streets of Salem until we come to the outskirts of town, not far from the Bloody Jackals clubhouse. It’s a spot beaten bloody into my memories.
This part of town is an industrial area. Sparsely populated with warehouses, metal shops, and a few garages. It’s the kind of place that empties out after dark.
He parks us in the alley behind an Oil and Lube joint.
Then, he pulls a phone out of his pocket. The light from the screen casts a silver glow over his face.
He grins at me.
“They’re about thirty minutes behind us. I’m surprised it took them that long.”
“They?”
“The club. We got the women somewhere safe and we held a vote. It’s war. The Jackals might have the numbers on us by a metric fuckton, but I’ll wager my left fucking nut that they expected us to just roll over after they hit our weapons storage.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“A whole lot of murder. We put these sons of bitches down. What else?”
I run my fingers along the handle of the gun in the back of my pants.
“Sounds good to me.”
Jarrett holds up one thick finger to his lips and inclines his head sideways. That far-off expression is back on his face and there’s a dark light in his eyes. At first, alarm seizes my heart.
Then I hear it.
A solitary, two-stroke engine. A deep-throated chugging rumble of a Harley.
“Stay here,” he cautions, drawing his own gun and moving to the entrance of the alley.
I keep to my spot in the alley, but I take my gun out.
That chugging noise gets closer.
Jarrett is perfectly still in his position in the shadows. The only indication he�
��s even alive is an occasional twitch of a finger. I watch him take aim from a perch behind a dumpster.
One crack. One shot. And there’s a screech as the bike goes down.
In a blink, he’s up from his hiding spot, sprinting full-bore out of the alley.
I can’t sit still.
I run forward, my gun ready. Fantasies of using it — of killing one of these bastards — dance in my vision. I want to kill every single one of these bastards who gets between me and my son.
By the time I get to the alley entrance, Jarrett’s already standing there, waiting, his belt off and wrapped around the throat of the Jackal and a big grin on his face.
“You’re not going to kill him?”
I’m disappointed. Even though this guy’s got a prospect patch on his cut, I’d still love to see his blood spill down the sewer drain at my feet.
Jarrett shakes his head.
“We need intel. Because I’ll guarantee you that Jake is not in that clubhouse.”
“Why?”
“Because, if you’re smart, you’re not going to keep a child in a location like that. For one, kids are noisy. For another, if some cops somehow decide to make an unannounced visit — as pigs are prone to do — you can’t really explain away a fucking four year old being tied up in a back room crying his lungs out,” Jarrett says. Then he yanks the belt tighter, causing the prospect to let out a gasping, gurgling noise. “These limp-dicked fuckers have to be keeping him off-site in a secondary location. So we’re going to have a little chat with him.”
This guy is quaking in Jarrett’s grip and if his eyes bug out anymore, they’ll be dropping at my feet.
Still, I hit him. I ram my size 8 shoe right into his crotch. Something gives as I kick him and his face contorts in pain. He drops to his knees, held up by the belt cinched around his throat. His face goes redder than my lipstick and veins bulge in his forehead.
I kick him in the dick again.
It feels good seeing him go limp.
“You want to do this right here, or you want to find somewhere quiet to interrogate him?” Jarrett says.
I know he wants to do this properly and take this guy somewhere else. But I can’t wait. I like having this piece of shit at my mercy.
“Right now, I just want to hit him. He knows what I’m going to ask. And he knows what to tell me to make sure this ends as quickly as possible for him,” I say.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jarrett chuckles. Then he leans into the Jackal prospect’s ear. “You know that child your club kidnapped? That’s his mom — you probably recognize her. She is going to fuck you up in ways you can’t even imagine. But if you’re good, I’ll make sure you die quick when she’s done with you.”
The words barely leave his mouth before I crack the prospect across the jaw with the butt of my pistol. Two teeth go flying from the Jackal bastard’s mouth.
“Jarrett, honey, can you press him up against the wall? I want to take out his kneecaps,” I say.
Jarrett raises an eyebrow. “You sure, babe?”
I know the tone in his voice. It’s a warning not to get carried away. Not to lose myself in violence against this guy.
Except I remember this son of a bitch’s face. From the sickly pallor of his skin to the slight crookedness of his too-fat nose. He wasn’t there when the Jackals picked me up at my home. But I remember him being at the clubhouse when they first brought us in. I remember him smacking my crying son with the back of his hand. I’ll never forget that.
If Jarrett wasn’t here, I’d kill this cocksucker myself. Maybe I still will.
“Just do it,” I say.
My voice is so cold it surprises even me.
Jarrett forces the prospect flat against the red brick wall of the alley. The man doesn’t struggle, much. Maybe he’s already accepted he’s going to die. Either way, I don’t care.
We don’t have time to inflict on him the pain he deserves.
All I see is the image of him striking my child.
And the cut he left across my son’s cheek.
I put all of that rage into my first swing. Something cracks in his knee as I bring the pistol to bear against it — there’s a snap and a shift in the shape of his knee and the Jackal howls like a beaten animal.
I hit him again. In the same spot. Bone pokes through skin and thick, almost-black blood oozes through the open wound.
He crumples, and Jarrett grunts as he does his best to hold the Jackal up on his feet by the belt cinched around his throat.
“Let’s give him a chance to talk before we kill him, alright?”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” I say.
“You got a personal problem with this guy?”
He’s looking at me in the same way I’m sure that I’ve looked at him before. When I’m worried he’s losing himself to his demons. I tear my eyes away from the bloody son of a bitch in front of me and I nod at Jarrett.
“This one hit Jake.”
Jarrett’s face transforms into pure rage the second I speak those words. He snarls and he turns on the man, hurling him to the ground and raining fists and feet down on him.
I stand back and I watch him beat that son of a bitch with unrestrained fury and violence.
I watch and I smile.
The beating stretches on, the Jackal’s face is broken without mercy until he looks like some half-formed clay mask of a person. Only when the man looks like he’s about to go limp and lose consciousness does Jarrett stop. He jerks swaying man to his feet.
He loosens the belt around the man’s throat. Just a little.
“Talk. Now.”
“Where’s my son?” I spit.
The man starts to open his mouth, but I know already I’m not going to like his answer. There’s something that flashes in his eyes; some kind of stupid defiance despite everything we’ve done to him.
“Get fu-”
He doesn’t finish his word before Jarrett wrenches the belt tight. He gurgles in his throat and blood vessels swell in his face and pop behind his eyes.
I crack him in the knee again. Same spot. Third time’s the charm.
“Don’t fuck around. You’ve got an angry mother on your ass. And neither of us give a god damn about how quick or slow you want to die. So, by all means, play the tough guy,” Jarrett says. He leans down and, with his free hand, pulls out a knife from a sheath around his ankle. “Go ahead. Show us how big of a dick you’ve got; I’ll cut it off.”
The Jackal squirms and jerks against the belt, trying to break free. Blood sputters from his protesting mouth. Jarrett just laughs and spits in the Jackal’s face.
I put my gun away. Hold out my hand to Jarrett.
“Give me the knife.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I get on my knees in front of the Jackal. It’s a position I’ve been in so many times before. In alleys just like this one. With men just like this man.
But this time, I’m the one in control.
I’m in control, and it feels so fucking good.
I’m out for blood and I won’t stop until I’m satisfied.
My fingers undo his belt with practiced precision. Then I unhook the buttons and pull down the zipper to his jeans.
I look up at his wide eyes and I smile. Eye contact’s important. So is a smile. They gotta know you enjoy being on your knees in front of them.
And I’m enjoying myself. Immensely.
“Still want to play tough guy?”
That defiant light is gone from his eyes.
All I see is fear.
I keep the knife in a firm grip, with my other hand, I pull his cock out. I press the knife right up to it. The cold steel of the blade puckers his cock and pure fear shines in this motherfucker’s eyes. I motion for Jarrett to loosen the belt.
“Tell the lady where her son is,” he says.
“Stash house. A mile west of here. Past the town of Eola. Bones — our president — wants to sell him. Look for the house behind the auto glass
shop.”
Sell my fucking son?
I’m going to kill them all.
“Was that so hard?” I say.
I smile at him, again. Because smiling’s important. And I am going to enjoy this.
I tighten my grip on the knife.
And I shove it in.
All the way to the hilt.
Warm blood washes over my hands. It’s thick, viscous, and gratifying.
Jarrett holds the twitching man still, gripping the belt tight in one hand and holding his other over the man’s mouth.
I stand up. I look him right in the eyes and I smile at him while his eyes roll in his socket and he bellows muffled screams of pain into Jarrett’s clenched grip.
“That’s for my son, you piece of shit.”
I spit in his face.
Eventually, the twitching stops.
The fearful light leaves the man’s eyes and he lets out one last bubbling, bloody breath. Jarrett lets go and the body falls to the pavement in a congealing pool of its own crimson.
“Let’s go get my son.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jarrett
The house is right where that piece of shit told us it’d be.
Except it ain’t much of a house. Squat, a few boarded-up windows, and a door that clings for dear life to its hinges. Calling it a drug den would be a compliment.
The two of us take up position about a half mile away. We park my bike and walk the rest of the way, keeping to every shadow we can find.
Hunched in a hiding spot, we scout the place out. There’s five men there that I can see — which is more than either of us are comfortable taking out with a kid around. One wrong move and they’ll kill him.
“What now?” Selena says.
The blood’s still sticky and fresh on her hands. Her face is fury and her eyes are vengeance. She’d turn this whole thing into a bloodbath at the slightest excuse.
And as much as I want to help her in that, we’ve got to play this smart or Jake is going to get hurt.